Nvidia Success Story: The Impactful Growth From Video Games To AI

While we are talking about Nvidia's success, this is just the beginning.

Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, the same year the term "millennial" was coined. Is this a "millennial" company? All signs point to yes as Nvidia was started with a belief that a PC would become a commercial device for enjoying video games and multimedia. What you have right now is the more advanced version of the chunky display device, a noisy CPU, clunky keyboard, and a ball mouse – all once called a PC, personal computer. At the time when the company started, there were several graphics chips companies, a number that soon multiplied manifold three years later.

With grit and determination, three young electrical engineers started Nvidia to make advanced specialized chips that would create faster and realistic graphics for video games. "There was no market in 1993, but we saw a wave coming," said Malachowsky to Forbes. "There's a California surfing competition that happens in a five-month window every year. When they see some type of wave phenomenon or storm in Japan, they tell all the surfers to show up in California, because there's going to be a wave in two days. That's what it was. We were at the beginning."

The wave here is the market for that time's GPUs or Graphic Processing Units. Back in those days, these chips were sold to gamers to plug into a PC's motherboard. Doing that generated ultra-fast 3D graphics which cost up to $1,200. Two decades later, these chips still constitute more than half of Nvidia's revenues.

A Timeline Of Technology & Innovation

• After the eventful beginning in 1993, 1994 saw Nvidia's first strategic partnership with SGS-Thompson for providing manufacturing capacity and allowing the co-marketing and selling of RIVA128ZX, a 3D technology graphics processor.
• In 1995, the company launched its first product, NV1. The PC card was sold as the Diamond Edge 3D, featuring a 2D/3D graphics core based on the quadratic textured mapping. You'd be surprised to know that Sega, the renowned arcade games company, boasts Virtual FIghter to be the first 3D game to run on Nvidia graphics.
• Nvidia's drive for innovation didn't stop after the success of NV1 in 1995. Soon in 1996, Nvidia unveiled its first Microsoft DirectX drivers with support for Direct3D. That is an API used to render 3D graphics where performance was of the utmost importance. Even today, DirectX is installed in all versions of Windows, from Windows XP, Vista, to 7,8, and 10.
• 1997 saw the launch of Riva 128, with a little nudge from SGS-Thompson. RIVA 128 was the world's first 128-bit 3D processor. It received OEM acceptance, and more than one million units were shipped within its first four months.
• Nvidia was gaining popularity in the industry. Hence, 1998 saw a new multi-year strategic partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which will assist NVIDIA in manufacturing products. The year also saw the emergence of RIVA TNT, the first multi textured 3D processor. Because of the name Nvidia was making in the market, The Fabless Semiconductor Association voted NVIDIA as the Industry's Most Respected Private Fabless Company for two consecutive years.
• In 1999, NVIDIA introduced the Quadro GPU for professional graphics. Quadro soon became the standard for professionals designing everything from tennis shoes to automobiles. In the same year, NVIDIA also invented the graphics processing unit, GeForce 256, the world's first GPU. NVIDIA defines it as "a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second."
• It's the year 2000, GeForce2 Go, the world's first notebook GPU was launched. It's also the year Nvidia acquired graphics pioneer 3DFX and Microsoft chooses Nvidia to power the graphics for its first Xbox gaming console.
• In 2001, Nvidia entered the integrated graphics market with nForce. NVIDIA becomes the fastest semiconductor company to reach $1 billion in revenue and is added to the S&P 500.
• 2002 was a landmark year for Nvidia as the company was named America's fastest-growing company. The company also shipped its 100 millionth processor and an effort to encourage game developers to fully exploit the power of their GPUs.
• In 2003, the company acquired Media Q, a leader in graphics and multimedia technology for wireless, while Stanford Business School Alumni Association named Nvidia as the entrepreneurial company of the year.
• In 2004, NVIDIA teamed up with Blizzard Entertainment on the release of World of Warcraft in 3D graphics. The massively multiplayer online game went on to become the world's most popular. The SLI technology was also born which made it easy for GPUs to be linked together. NVIDIA also helped NASA reconstruct the terrain of Mars using NVIDIA technology. The data transmitted by the Rover was rendered in photorealistic virtual reality, allowing scientists to explore Mars as if they were moving freely on the red planet's surface.
• 2005 had Nvidia develop a processor for Microsoft Xbox's rival Sony Playstation, the third version. The company also acquired ULi Electronics, a Taiwan-based developer of core logic technology.
• 2006 was the year the company sold its 500 millionth graphics processor. Acquisition of Hybrid Graphics, a developer of embedded 2D and 3D graphics software for handheld devices, was successful and Nvidia revealed CUDA architecture for general-purpose GPU computing.
• 2007 was a year of accolades. The company achieves its first quarter with $1 billion in revenue, won an Emmy for the impact its innovation and the impact its technologies had on the entertainment industry, got named as the company of the year by Forbes, and launched the Tesla GPU.
• In 2008, Mental images, a leader in visual rendering software was acquired along with AGEIA, a developer of gaming physics technology. A Tokyo-based tech company built Tsubame, the first Tesla-GPU-based supercomputer.
• 2009 saw the launch of Fermi Architecture at the inaugural GPU technology conference and NVIDIA worked with Google to launch Android on Tesla processors.
• Something monumental happened in 2010. Nvidia powered the world's fastest supercomputer, China's Tianhe – 1A.
• In 2011, Nvidia shipped its 1 billionth processor, and Quadro GPUs again power all Academy Award nominees for "Best Visual Effects," including Inception and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
• 2012, the year of another supercomputer Oak Ridge National Laboratory rolls out Titan, the world's top supercomputer, powered by Kepler-based NVIDIA Tesla GPUs.Tegra-3 powered smartphones and tablets were also launched in that year, and Kepler-based GeForce GTX 600 series introduced, offering the world's fastest gaming performance.
• 2013, after the previous year's tablets and smartphones, the Tegra 4 family of mobile processors were introduced. The Portland Group is also acquired, advancing NVIDIA's creation of developer tools for the accelerated-computing revolution.
• 2014 saw a new high in the Android gaming market with the launch of Tegra K1, a shield tablet. Maxwell, Nvidia's 10th generation architecture, is introduced, powering revolutionary advances in GeForce GTX GPU performance, graphics, and efficiency.
• 2015 was Nvidia's first stint with deep learning with the launch of Tegra X1, a drive. NVIDIA SHIELD, the company's first living room entertainment device redefined the TV experience.
• 2016 is when the company's AI revolution began. Nvidia launched AI-powered Pascal, DGX-1, and Drive PX2. NVIDIA Iray® VR was also introduced, simulating light and materials to create interactive, photo-realistic virtual environments.
• In 2017, Nvidia progressed modern AI with GPU deep learning and Volta. NVIDIA SHIELD™ brings AI to the home with Google Assistant and SmartThings Hub technology.
• 2018, Nvidia reinvents computer graphics with Turing Architecture, powering the world's first GPUs capable of real-time ray tracing. NVIDIA also introduced RAPIDS™, an open-source GPU-acceleration platform to accelerate data science and machine learning.
• 2019 is when Nvidia braced the advent of technology by announcing advancements across HPC, embedded, data center, autonomous vehicle, and pro graphics market.
• And now coming to 2020, when Nvidia successfully acquired Mellanox, a leader in high-performance interconnect technology, uniting two of the world's leading companies in HPC.

The AI Revolution

The graphics specialist company made all the right headlines all these years. But it's not all video games and graphics that took this company to the heights that it is now. It's artificial intelligence and deep learning. Deep learning facilitates a computer to learn on its own, without the IT department having to overlook the coding aspects. This leads to accurate image and speech recognition.

Tech kings like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon are buying Nvidia's chips for their data centers in huge quantities. These chips provide companies with the necessary horsepower for virtual reality gears that are being launched in the market. Approximately, there are 3,000 AI startups worldwide and many of those are building processes on Nvidia's platforms. They use the company's GPU in AI apps that are used for trading stocks, shopping online, and navigating drones.

Jensen Huang had an itch that the graphics chips had more potential to it than just power video games, but what he didn't expect was his shift to deep learning. There were two limitations to adopt the technology, the amount of data needed to train the algorithms and the access to greater horsepower for computing. While the internet solved the first problem of data availability, the launch of CUDA in 2006 solved the latter. The programming toolkit allowed coders to easily program individual pixels on a screen.  CUDA introduced the ease of programming a high-level language like Java or C++ to GPUs.

"AI Computing is the future of computing. So, long as we continue to make our platform the best platform for AI computing, I think we're going to have a good shot of winning lots of business. GPUs will be all over companies", said Huang to Forbes.

Nvidia is now a powerful company that is defining the way computing is carried on in the 21st century. What is the one mantra for success that the founders and visionaries of Nvidia follow? "I always think we're 30 days from going out of business. That's never changed. It's not a fear of failure. It's really a fear of feeling complacent, and I don't ever want that to settle in", says Huang.